Elevated Malaria Case Rates in Northern Mali – A Metric to Watch for the Sahel and Beyond

Sahelien, Le Monde, and others are reporting that case rates for Malaria in Kidal, northern Mali, are approximately double this year what they were at this time last year. Here is Sahelien’s video report (French):

The high case rate has much to do with this year’s high rates of rainfall, which as Le Monde points out have affected even what is normally thought of as the northern Malian desert. Experts are also identifying COVID-19, and its impacts on health systems and health supplies, as another cause. From a relatively early point in the pandemic, there have been fears that COVID-19 would lead to excess deaths from malaria (and HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis).

Public health officials launched a five-day, region-wide malaria prevention campaign for Kidal in the second half of September.

The Ménaka and Gao regions are also affected. One Malian news outlet says there were 4,500 cases in the north during the past few weeks. That report adds another crucial point about the indirect impact of COVID-19 – the pandemic triggers headlines and mobilizes resources, while malaria gets much less attention than it merits.

Belated Notes on Recent Inter-Communal Violence and Big Man Politics in Gao, Northern Mali

The coup in Bamako, Mali on August 18 has consumed a lot of attention on the part of Malians and foreign analysts, including me – but significant events are unfolding in other parts of the country, too. Belatedly, I’m catching up on the non-coup news out of Mali.

One important story is coming out of the northern city of Gao (map). On August 20-21, violence in Gao claimed at least three lives. By August 23, calm was reportedly returning to the city.

Trying to sort out what happened plunges one, almost immediately, into competing accounts, rumors,* and even disinformation, as this report discusses (French).

One account (from the previous link) is that a young Arab was lynched by a crowd, and then “light-skinned” Arabs and Tuareg in the city, feeling targeted and abused, mobilized against the “black skinned” Songhoi (quoted phrases are from the linked article), who then in turn committed reprisals.

Another, perhaps compatible account says that the young Arab in question tried to rob a gold shop on August 16, ended up killing a security guard, and was then wounded, caught while fleeing, and burned alive by a crowd. Then on August 20, there was a drive-by shooting that killed two people at an outdoor youth hangout in Gao’s Aljannabandia neighborhood and resulted in the death of one other person who succumbed to his wounds later, at the hospital. On August 20 and 21 there were, reportedly, riots, road blockades, and targeted looting, especially of Arab-owned shops. By August 23, ground and air patrols by Malian and international forces, as well as meetings between community leaders, helped to restore calm.

Alongside the role of Facebook and other social media in amplifying tensions, there are at least two other crucial factors involved in the violence. First, Malian observers point to the “awakening of old demons” (French) from the 1990s; that is, inter-ethnic tensions are not new to Gao, and present-day violence draws on memories of earlier conflicts. Second, what we might call macro-politics or capital P Politics comes into play alongside the micro-politics of lynchings, looting, etc. – for example, one of the accounts linked above (link again here) says that the young Arab who died was a member of a signatory armed group, in other words a group that is a signatory to the 2015 Algiers Accord. If true, that would suggest that his death activated not just communitarian identities generally, but also specific and powerful political-military actors.

The major political ramifications of these events played out in the attempted peace-making process as well. Some very big deal players became brokers in the negotiations. On August 26, community leaders in Gao signed an accord that stipulates, among other measures, the disarmament of all actors other than the Malian armed forces, security forces, and signatories to the 2015 Algiers Accord. The Gao agreement also calls on all factions, including signatories to the Algiers Accord, to return to their bases and refrain from bearing arms in the city except in emergencies. The text of the Gao agreement is here:

#GAO: Un Accord de principe vient d'être signé par les chefs communautaires autour du Gouverneur pour la paix et la sécurité dans la ville après les heurts de la semaine passée. @YGuichaoua @Walid_Leberbere @mathpellerin @sidikounta7 pic.twitter.com/i3qSVKUrcb

— Amachagh (@Amachagh10) August 26, 2020

Signatories to the Gao agreement included Aly Bady Maiga for the Songhoi, Mohamed Ould Mataly for the Arabs, Mohamed Youssouf Ghalass for the Tuareg, and Ibrahim Issa Diallo for the Peul.

Ould Mataly has two other distinctions: first, he is (or was, until the August 18 coup and ensuing dissolution of parliament) a deputy in the National Assembly; and second, he was sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council in 2019. The listing read, in part, “Through his involvement in organised crime and association with terrorist armed groups, Mohamed Ould Mataly threatens the implementation of the [Algiers] Agreement.”

Other signatories to the recent Gao agreement have also been accused of involving with narcotrafficking, funding militias, and other destabilizing activities – see the Peter Tinti’s mention of both Ould Mataly and Maiga in a 2014 report for the Global Initiative (p. 16).

Ould Mataly is closely associated with the Plateforme, a coalition of militias (sometimes described as “pro-government,” although lately I’ve been thinking that “anti-rebel” might be better) that is a signatory to the Algiers Accord. The Plateforme and Ould Mataly’s role within it are both extremely complex – see p. 3 of the February 2020 United Nations Panel of Experts report for a few details on intra-Plateforme tensions and splits, drug trafficking, and other political alignments and realignments in northern Mali. For the purposes of this post, though, the main point is just to reiterate that if the young Arab man who was lynched was indeed a member of a signatory group, perhaps the Plateforme, then that helps to explain why and how his death ultimately drew in some very big players in Gao.

Given all the politics and history surrounding not just the violence but also those individuals now spearheading an attempted resolution, some analysts are skeptical about the prospects for the latest agreement to bring peace. I leave you with Rida Lyammouri’s blunt words:

#Mali: I will keep saying it when I see it: there will be no peace as long as these names (some are under UN sanctions) are the ones signing accords to achieve…..”peace.” See latest panel of experts report and my blog from oct 2015. #Sahel pic.twitter.com/vzYxk01md7

— Rida Lyammouri (@rmaghrebi) August 26, 2020

Here is the 2015 post Lyammouri is referencing.

*For a recent examination of the role of rumor in Mali, see this article by Adam Sandor.

Mali: What Next for the Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission?

RFI has an article on Mali’s Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission (Commission vérité justice et réconciliation, CVJR) that raises some important questions. The CVJR, whose official website can be found here, was created in 2014 with a mandate through 2018. RFI expects that the mandate will be renewed, but at least two key challenges remain:

1. How can the Commission hear from as many victims as possible? The article mentions that the office in Kidal only opened two weeks ago; even more seriously, victims can face reprisals if they are seen talking to the Commission. Then too there is the problem of severe violence in the center of Mali, particularly Mopti, which creates waves of new victims as well as new difficulties pertaining to victims’ access to the Commission.
2. How will the Commission’s plans for a victims’ reparations law be squared with plans for a law of “national understanding,” which some critics call an amnesty? (For one commentary on the law, see here, and for one version of the text, see here.)

These are big questions, of course, and debates over “justice” versus “peace” can be extremely fraught. My own thinking on the bigger picture was heavily influenced by Jacob Mundy’s book Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence, which deals in part with ways  that forgetting can be just as important to peace as remembering can.

But to move from the big picture back to the details, I was interested to look a bit into the commission’s structure. From the website, one learns that it comprises twenty-five commissioners, directed by a president (Ousmane Oumarou Sidibé, a lawyer and former labor minister) and two vice presidents (former parliamentary deputy Hat ag Baye* and Islamic scholar El Hadj Sidi Konake). One could say that northerners have a large representation on the commission, with the president coming from Timbuktu, one of the vice presidents (ag Baye) coming from Gao, and at least nine of the commissioners having recognizably Arab or Tuareg names. This is not to say that the commission’s balance is off – after all, the north was where the violence began in the current cycle of conflict, and where many of the victims still are. And the other vice president (Konake) is from Mopti, so that region has senior representation too. I guess what is striking is the comparison between this northern-dominated Commission and many other organs of the Malian government, where northern representation is quite thin. On the other hand, one doesn’t want to get too caught up in the politics of representation, which easily becomes an end in and of itself – what matters is the quality of performance.

A final note is that there are several commissioners with connections to Mali’s High Islamic Council, which could mean both that the Commission actively sought out religious leaders as members and/or that the High Islamic Council had a lot of say in who got to sit on the commission.

*Ag Baye replaced Nina Wallet Intallou, who became Minister of Tourism.

 

Notes on the Carter Center’s Second Report on Mali’s Peace Process

The Carter Center is the independent observer designated to follow the implementation of Mali’s peace process as envisioned by the 2015 Algiers Accord. The selection of an independent observer is itself one part of the Accord’s implementation. The Carter Center released its first report in May 2018, and released its second report on 26 October.

Here are my notes on the latter. To me the most striking passages involved (a) the Carter Center’s concerns about the Accord Monitoring Committee (CSA) and (b) the report’s observations about the Operational Coordination Mechanism (MOC) and civilians’ negative perceptions of it in Gao. Here are some key excerpts:

• The overall tone is mixed, leaning cautiously optimistic. From p. 3: “The observation period was marked by modest but real progress as well as by a significant pause in implementation caused by the presidential election. While progress has been made in disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR), other obstacles remain, particularly the establishment of the Interim Authorities and the Operational Coordination Mechanism (Mécanisme opérationnel de coordination – MOC) as fully operational. Despite their continued commitment to the agreement, this mixed record underlines the fact that the Malian parties (government of Mali, Coordination des mouvements de l’Azawad [CMA]), and the Plateforme des mouvements du 14 juin d’Alger [Platform]) remain reluctant to advance quickly.”
• After noting implementation challenges related to the structures created by the Accord and the signatories’ postures, the report goes on to note other challenges to peace. From p. 4: “Two challenges external to the agreement itself impede progress – the crisis in central Mali and criminal economic activity. The crisis in central Mali could overtax the resources initially earmarked for the execution of the agreement, while the ‘criminal economy’ – whose link with the implementation of the agreement has been sufficiently documented by the report of the group of experts established pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 2374 (2017) – slows and discourages implementation.” For background on the crisis in central Mali, this report is a good place to start for Anglophones; for those who read French, I would add this report as well. The report of the UN group of experts can be found here, and my own notes on it are here. Finally, the Carter Center report discusses these two issues (central Mali and criminal economic activity) a bit more on p. 13.
• The report makes numerous critiques of the Monitoring Committee/Comité de suivi de l’accord (CSA). From p. 6: “Normally scheduled monthly, only three CSA sessions were held during the five-month observation period, due in large part to the presidential election. These sessions lasted only a single day, and sometimes just a few hours. During these sessions, a blockage on a particular topic occasionally led to the suspension or end of a session. The CSA ratifies, often without discussion or formal decision, the actions or agreements made by the parties…The appointment of the minister of social cohesion [see here – AT] is a significant clarification of thegovernment’s presence in the CSA. At the same time, the Independent Observer notes that senior officials of the CMA, based in Kidal, regularly call into question the conclusions or decisions negotiated by representatives in Bamako. The Platform coalition is often marked by wide differences between its members, which impact and slow decision-making.”
• The report also focuses in on the difference between the formal installation of the interim authorities in northern areas and their actual functioning. From p. 9: “At the regional level, Interim Authorities have been established officially in Kidal (February 2017), Gao and Ménaka (March 2017), and Timbuktu and Taoudéni (April 2017). However, none are in fact operational because they lack budgets to carry out their missions, including the provision of basic services…Over and above these specific obstacles, the Independent Observer expresses concern about the lack of initiative shown by the government to empower the Interim Authorities. Because of the absence of a budget and activities, the Interim Authorities are gradually being undermined and the government’s good faith called into question.”
• The report has strong words about the MOC, writing that it is operation but deeply hamstrung in Gao, and “not operational” in Timbuktu and Kidal (p. 10). Significantly, the report notes that in Gao, “the population complains of growing insecurity and tends to attribute the increase in banditry and crime to the presence of MOC members.” In other words, the issue is not just about budgets and technical implementation but also about perceptions. The dynamic the report notes is a very dangerous one.

 

 

Mali: Another Look at the Presidential Election Results

The “Les Afriques dans le Monde” project at Sciences Po Bordeaux has posted some useful maps and charts on Mali’s presidential elections.

Here are a few takeaways:

• It’s really striking to see the pie charts that include abstentions. The visuals really underscore the weakness of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta’s second term mandate.
• The post highlights that of more than 65,000 new voters added to the rolls for the 12 August runoff, approximately half of them were in Gao and half in the diaspora. These are the kinds of numbers that have raised eyebrows in Mali.
• The maps showing vote share by region are also extremely useful. The map of the first round highlights how well IBK did in the north (especially Kidal and Gao) and how poorly he did in Mopti (which also had, far and away, the highest number of polling place closures due to violence. Interestingly, as the authors note, IBK’s main rival Soumaïla Cissé had his best score in Timbuktu (20%), and his second-best in Gao, so this is not a story of Cissé doing well in south and IBK doing well in the north – rather, it’s the story of two candidates with significant northern support amid a divided south, where the share of votes going to other candidates was much higher. Cissé had minimal support in the south, actually.
• The map of the second round reinforces these patterns. IBK dominated Kidal, but Cissé preserved a substantial vote share in Timbuktu (increasing, actually, to 26% there) and Gao. Only in those two regions, moreover, was the share of people voting greater than the share of people not voting. In the south, again, Cissé had relatively little support. Moreover, abstentions reached 70% in Segou, Bamako, and Sikasso.
• I would reiterate what I’ve said before, namely that IBK is in some sense not really the president of Mopti (and even, one could argue, Segou). The violence was so severe, and the abstentions so high, that I take the outcome there as a rejection of the process itself.

Northern Mali’s Interim Authorities: Serious Problems Emerge

In late February, different factions in Mali agreed on a timetable for the installation of “interim authorities” in the three northern regions, Gao, Timbuktu, and Kidal. The interim authorities are mentioned in the 2015 peace accord (.pdf, French, p. 18). Per the accord, the authorities should have been installed three months after the signing of the accord, or around September 2015.

Given that the different factions were not even prepared to install the interim authorities until now, one can see how serious the obstacles to a durable political settlement are in northern Mali. The problems with the interim authorities closely parallel the problems surrounding “joint patrols,” which I wrote about for Global Observatory in January. The joint patrols are another important provision of the 2015 agreement. The problems for both the interim authorities and the patrols include continued disputes even after so-called agreements, as well as the threat of major violence against the actors attempting to implement those agreements (the joint patrols became the target of Mali’s deadliest-ever suicide bombing in Gao in January).

Regarding the interim authorities, “The government statement said…that the interim authorities would be instated in Kidal on Feb. 28 followed by Gao on March 2 and Timbuktu on March 3.”

The authorities arrived in Kidal, Gao and Menaka as scheduled (over some objections in Gao), but armed groups are already preventing the interim authorities from undertaking their functions in Timbuktu:

Armed groups took over parts of Timbuktu on Monday to prevent Malian interim authorities from being installed there under a peace pact meant to end years of lawlessness, the defense ministry said.

Residents reported sporadic gunfire across Timbuktu on Monday. Banks, schools and shops were shuttered up.

[…]

The main Tuareg faction involved in the resistance was the Council for Justice in Azawad, as Tuaregs call the Sahara desert that is their traditional homeland.

The Council itself was only formed in October 2016 (French), reflecting a key obstacle to peace: the proliferation of armed groups. The Council reportedly (French) represents the Kel Ansar, one the Tuareg confederations in Mali. Led by a former cabinet minister, the Council decries (French) what it sees as the Kel Ansar’s exclusion from the peace process. As with other armed groups, the Council can act – and now is acting – as a spoiler.

Other problems are not hard to foresee. If the joint patrols are a precedent, the interim authorities will themselves be targets for violence before too long. I say this not to advocate pessimism about the ultimate prospects for peace (after all, the first joint patrol recently did occur), but just to point out that the situation is very difficult and tense.

Mali: More Details on the January 18 Gao Suicide Bombing

On January 18, suicide bombers attacked the Operational Coordination Mechanism in Gao, northern Mali – the camp for forces preparing to undertake mixed patrols (rebels, pro-government militias, government forces) in the city. The casualty count, initially reported at around forty, has steadily risen, with RFI (French) putting it now at 77.

The attack was soon claimed (French) by al-Murabitun, a group affiliated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who may or may not be dead. Al-Murabitun said,

We warn all those who have been seduced by France…that we will not accept barracks, bases, patrols, or convoys of the French colonizer who fights the mujahidin.

International media coverage of the statement understandably focused on its anti-French language and the fact that French President Francois Hollande visited Gao just a few days before the attack. But I read the statement more as an anti-peace proclamation, and the attack not as primarily anti-French but as anti-peace. The mixed patrols in Gao represent a small step toward peace in northern Mali (a peace supported by France, no doubt, but also brokered by Algeria and supported to different degrees by the Malian government and other non-jihadist actors in the north), and the achievement of that peace would further marginalize al-Murabitun.

Another noteworthy detail is that al-Murabitun identified the bomber as Abd al-Hadi al-Fulani. Although this is likely a pseudonym, it seems al-Murabitun wished to stress that the bomber was from the Fulani/Peul ethnic group, which is prominent in central and northern Mali and throughout the western Sahel and into northern Nigeria (on central Mali, International Crisis Group’s report from last year is worth reading). The Fulani have come under heavy, and to my mind completely unfair, suspicion as a group over the past few years. Al-Murabitun may be both trying to trumpet whatever Fulani support it has and hoping that identifying the bomber as Fulani will exacerbate collective punishment and suspicion of the Fulani – a scenario that could benefit al-Murabitun, of course.

For its part, the Malian government has swung into action, with President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita visiting Gao (French) and declaring three days of national mourning. But RFI (French) has questions about how easily the bomber (or bombers? there may have been up to five) penetrated the camp in Gao. Malian voices have joined in the critical questioning, with one commentator (French) denouncing the “irresponsibility of the Malian state its partners.” The critics, I think, have a point. If the mixed patrols in Gao are to bring greater security to the north, they must themselves enjoy a basic level of security.

 

Mali’s Mixed Patrols and Yesterday’s Gao Suicide Bombing

Yesterday saw a tragic suicide bombing – the deadliest in Mali’s history – in the northern city of Gao. The bombing targeted a camp housing forces in Gao’s new mixed patrols. I analyze the patrols and their significance in this piece for Global Observatory. An excerpt:

The violence targeted a base that 200 former rebels had recently entered in preparation for mixed patrols with the Malian military and pro-government militias. These patrols are intended to fulfill a key condition of the 2015 Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation in Mali, which has faced a rocky path to implementation. The new violence shows the serious and persistent level of opposition that has made peace so difficult to achieve in the country.

The patrols comprise three main groups: 200 former separatist rebels (CMA), 200 pro-government militia members (Platform), and 200 government soldiers. Here is one reported death toll from yesterday:

#Mali
La répartition des victimes de l'attentat de ce matin à #Gao serait de
CMA 32: morts
Plateforme: 27 morts
FAMas: 18 morts

— JournalduMali (@JourDuMali) January 18, 2017

The suicide bombing in Gao has been claimed (French) by al-Murabitun, a unit affiliated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. The incident shows how jihadists retain the ability to act as spoilers. In this case, they have chosen a highly symbolic target, striking at a core vehicle for attempting to build unity and peace in northern Mali.

Recent News from Gao, Mali: Mixed Patrols, A Kidnapping, and A Shooting

Gao, one of northern Mali’s key cities, has witnessed several notable developments recently.

• On December 24, unknown kidnappers seized a longtime French resident and aid worker affiliated with the small NGO Aide Gao. A search (French) was immediately mounted by Malian forces, French forces, and UN peacekeepers. Jeune Afrique (French) summarizes what is known of the kidnapping itself, the victim, and the search.
• On January 4, a local Red Cross employee was shot and killed. “A resident of Gao said the worker had been shot by two men on a motorcycle late at night.”
• On January 5, mixed patrols began in Gao involving former rebels from the Coordination of Azawad Movements (French acronym CMA), pro-government militia forces, and Malian government forces. The full force is expected to comprise 200 fighters from each of the three categories. The mixed patrols are meant to fulfill one condition from a 2015 peace deal. Until early January, the pro-government armed groups had opposed (French) the CMA’s desire to enter the city, but international and governmental mediation (French) appears to have resolved the dispute for the moment.

On Gao, MUJWA, and the ICRC

On March 30, a driver for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was fatally shot outside Gao, northern Mali. The attack was quickly claimed (French) by the Movement for Unity/Tawhid and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA, or MUJAO in French). MUJWA, an offshoot of al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb, was a key participant in the jihadist takeover of northern Mali in 2012-2013. MUJWA and other jihadists have continued to trouble Mali since the French-led military intervention swept the jihadists out of power – though not entirely out of Mali – in 2013. MUJWA was a dominant player in Gao during 2012-2013.

One immediate effect of the killing will be a partial withdrawal by the ICRC. In a statement, the ICRC expressed concern over “the rise in violence against humanitarian workers, which is preventing them from coming to the aid of individuals and communities in dire need.” The humanitarian group has now suspended travel (French) in the north. The chilling effect of violence on relief operations is bad news for Mali, particularly for the approximately 100,000 Malians who remain internally displaced.

The attack also calls attention to MUJWA’s complicated trajectory. Since 2013, some fighters from MUJWA have joined the al-Murabitun network, named for an eleventh-century northwest African Islamic empire (al-Murabitun recently claimed an attack on a nightclub in Mali’s capital Bamako). Others have joined the Arab Movement of the Azawad (French), one of the non-jihadist northern rebel movements opposed to the national government but participating in intermittent peace talks. As the former MUJWA fighter interviewed at the link explains, some northern Malian Arabs looked to MUJWA to protect them from the Tuareg rebel group the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, another key northern rebel faction but an enemy of the Arab Movement of the Azawad. The point is not only the astounding complexity of the landscape of armed groups in northern Mali (which there are many experts who can explain better than I can), but also the way in which so many of the major actors from 2012-2013 are still influential, albeit often in different ways and venues than before.